page_title: Sino-Roman relations
section_title: Other Roman embassies
hierarchical_section_title: Sino-Roman relations / Embassies and travel / Other Roman embassies
caption_attribution_description: English: An ancient Roman green glass cup discovered in an Eastern Han tomb of Guangxi, China, dated to the Eastern Han period (25-220 AD). Photo taken in the National Museum, Beijing.
context_page_description: Sino-Roman relations comprised the mostly indirect contact, flow of trade goods, information, and occasional travellers between the Roman Empire and Han Empire of China, as well as between the later Eastern Roman Empire and various Chinese dynasties. These empires inched progressively closer in the course of the Roman expansion into the ancient Near East and simultaneous Han Chinese military incursions into Central Asia. Mutual awareness remained low, and firm knowledge about each other was limited. Only a few attempts at direct contact are known from records. Intermediate empires such as the Parthians and Kushans, seeking to maintain lucrative control over the silk trade, inhibited direct contact between these two Eurasian powers. In 97 AD, the Chinese general Ban Chao tried to send his envoy Gan Ying to Rome, but Gan was dissuaded by Parthians from venturing beyond the Persian Gulf. Several alleged Roman emissaries to China were recorded by ancient Chinese historians. The first one on record, supposedly from either the Roman emperor Antoninus Pius or his adopted son Marcus Aurelius, arrived in 166 AD.
context_section_description: The Weilüe and Book of Liang record the arrival in 226 AD of a merchant named Qin Lun (秦論) from the Roman Empire (Daqin) at Jiaozhi (Chinese-controlled northern Vietnam). Wu Miao, the Prefect of Jiaozhi, sent him to the court of Sun Quan (the ruler of Eastern Wu during the Three Kingdoms) in Nanjing, where Sun requested that he provide him with a report on his native country and its people. An expedition was mounted to return the merchant along with ten female and ten male "blackish coloured dwarfs" he had requested as a curiosity, as well as a Chinese officer, Liu Xian of Huiji (in Zhejiang), who died en route. According to the Weilüe and Book of Liang Roman merchants were active in Cambodia and Vietnam, a claim supported by modern archaeological finds of ancient Mediterranean goods in the Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
  Yule mentions that in the early 3rd century AD a ruler of Daqin sent an envoy with gifts to the northern Chinese court of Cao Wei (220–266 AD) that included glassware of various colours. Several years later a Daqin craftsman is mentioned as showing the Chinese how to make "flints into crystal by means of fire", a curiosity to the Chinese.
  Another embassy from Daqin is recorded as bringing tributary gifts to the Chinese Jin Empire (266–420 AD). This occurred in 284 AD during the reign of Emperor Wu of Jin (r. 266–290 AD), and was recorded in the Book of Jin, as well as the later Wenxian Tongkao. This embassy was presumably sent by the Emperor Carus (r. 282–283 AD), whose brief reign was preoccupied by war with Sasanian Persia.
caption: Green Roman glass cup unearthed from an Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 AD) tomb of Guangxi (bordering modern-day Vietnam in southern China)
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